Gavin - Just wanted to encourage you to keep it up. I'm currently almost identical to you.

In my late 20's I weighed 263 (5'9) and lost 100 pounds by doing crazy cardio every day, along with a diet of no more than 1000 calories (Subway for lunch, every day, then very small breakfast and dinner). Man 163 felt great. Went from 44 waist to a 32 waist and XXL to M shirt size.

Then some personal crap happened in my life and over the years I put it all back on, and more. I weighed 293 (Size 50 waist) on 1/18 of this year. I know people on here are going to flame me for it, but I got the lap-band on 1/18. After seeing my grandpa die of 2 strokes and a heart attack, and seeing my dad have a stroke in his early 50's (He just had a quintuple heart bypass surgery last week) I decided that enough is enough. Obviously my personal problem is not loosing the weight -- it's keeping it off. (Statistics show this is exceptionally common for dieters) Thankfully, I only have some slipped discs in my lower back, and nothing worse.

(The above sounds like I'm advocating you get the lap band, but I'm not, my advice is below...)

As of today, I'm at 255. I've had a fairly difficult time loosing weight, but you gotta keep at it every day. The best advice I can give is what worked for me:

- Realize you're human and when you screw up and eat bad stuff, try not to get down on yourself. Just resume correct eating at the next meal.
- Realize that day to day variations in your weight due to water are more than what you can subtract due to good eating and excersizing alone...so...if you weigh yourself every day (They say its best if you don't, but I do, to hold myself accountable) remember if the scale says you weigh more today, try not to get upset.
- Heard this tip from a weight loss class I had to take before my surgery. Very simple advice, yet very good advice: Do something! Sometimes I feel like crap and I don't want to exercise because I can't make it through my normal full set. It takes a lot, but try to get up and do something. If you normally do 30 minutes, and you feel lousy, just try 15 minutes....
- Advice from my Doctor last week: If you're like me, when you work out, you try to do too much. I have a tendency to keep my heart rate in the high 80% range. Doing that makes me feel like I'm going to pass out after I get off the machine. It also makes my body feel like I've been ran over by a X5 (pulling my 135 ) Just yesterday I gave it a whirl about keeping my heart rate at about 65-70% While I definitely burned less calories during the same alotted time, I felt so much better when I finished. I really could have went longer and made up the calories with time.

I won't give you any advice on the eating other than what others have already said. Fat lost = daily food intake - basal metabolic rate - excersized energy. Getting more of your calories from protein is generally better than refined carbs or fats, but many protein sources contain cholesterol which isn't good.

I think when I get down to my goal weight I'm going to reward myself with a used Elise or something like that (which will require me to stay thin to drive the darn thing)